Agnes of Baden, Duchess of Carinthia


Agnes of Baden, was a German noblewoman by birth member of the House of Baden and by her two marriages Duchess of Carinthia and Countess of Heunburg.
She was the second child of Herman VI, Margrave of Baden and his wife Gertrude, Duchess of Mödling, titular Duchess of Austria and Styria as the last member of the House of Babenberg. For her maternal ancestry, some historians consider Agnes as the last descendant of the Babenbergs.

Life

Shortly after her birth, her father died and her mother lost her inheritance when her aunt Margaret and her husband, Prince Ottokar of Bohemia, where chosen rulers of Austria and Styria.
During her childhood, Agnes lived in Meissen, Saxony, together with her mother, older brother Frederick and her youngest half-sister Maria Romanovna of Halicz.
In 1263 Agnes married with the widower Ulrich III, Duke of Carinthia and landgrave of Carniola, a member of the House of Sponheim and thirty years her senior. They had no children.
On 29 October 1268, Agnes' brother and his friend Conradin where executed in Naples. King Ottokar II of Bohemia, after taking possession of the Duchies of Austria and Styria, wanted to eliminate all possible contenders to his power, and played an ambiguous role in this event. On 4 December of that year, the Bohemian ruler also compelled Ulrich III to sign a secret treaty in the city of Poděbrady, under which Ottokar II inherited all his lands and dignities in the - likely - case of his childless death, excluding the next and last surviving legitimate member of his family, his younger brother Philip, former Archbishop of Salzburg and ruling Count of Lebenau. Finally, in 1269 Ottokar II also confined Gertrude into a definitive exile in Meissen, where she died in 1288.
After the death of Duke Ulrich III on 27 October 1269, Agnes was married in 1271 to Count Ulrich II of Heunburg "in depressionem generis". The House of Heunburg, originally only a Carinthian noble family raised to the rank of Ministerialis by Duke Ulrich III, wasn't befitted to a union with a member of the Baden and Babenberg houses. However, King Ottokar II awarded Count Ulrich II in this way for his support after he took the Duchy of Carinthia.
Despite this difficult beginning together, Ulrich II and Agnes apparently had a happy marriage, especially when the Count of Heunburg gradually took his distance from the Bohemian king. They had five children:
Later, the Count and Countess of Heunburg tried together to take advantage of the chaotic situation in Carinthia and claimed part of Agnes' dower lands retained by Ottokar, mainly the County of Pernegg with the city of Drosendorf and other properties, but finally they were forced to surrender by the Bohemian King. Only in 1279 King Rudolph I of Germany -after the defeat and death of King Ottokar II- was able to recognize their claims or at least partially compensated for them.
As a result, Agnes supported her husband in his revolt against the new ruler of Carinthia, Meinhard II of Görz and took the side of the Habsburgs. After the defeat of Ulrich II, she followed him into exile in Wiener Neustadt, where she died in 1295. She is buried at the Wiener Minorites Church.